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    Tears and Laughter
    Tears and Laughter
    Tears and Laughter
    Ebook136 pages1 hour

    Tears and Laughter

    By Kahlil Gibran and Martin L. Wolf

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    About this ebook

    This classic work showcases the early brilliance and philosophical foundation of Kahlil Gibran, one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century  Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet and one of the twentieth century’s most revolutionary, inspiring writers, effortlessly blends his unique perspective on Eastern and Western philosophy in this early collection of work, written when he was just twenty years old. From delicate turns of phrase to strong assertions of equality, delightful rejoicings to frightening prophecies, Gibran’s poetry and prose reveal his eternal hunger for love and beauty.   This expanded edition includes key works of social justice such as “The Bride’s Bed” and firmly establishes Gibran’s role as champion of human rights and individual liberty.  
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPhilosophical Library Open Road
    Release dateDec 20, 2011
    ISBN9781453228531
    Tears and Laughter
    Author

    Kahlil Gibran

    Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) was an essayist, novelist, and mystic poet. He wrote The Prophet, a collection of philosophical essays that went on to become one of the bestselling books of the twentieth century. Though he was born in Lebanon, he moved to Boston’s South End as a child and studied art with Auguste Rodin in Paris for two years before launching his literary career. Much of Gibran’s work contains themes of religion and Christianity as well as spiritual love.

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    • 2/5
      Couldn't decide on 2 - 2.5 - 3 stars for this one. I've read some of Kahlil Gibran's other works (notably The Prophet and Voices of the Master), and while this was still good in that vein.... it was a lot more of the "I am the soul" or "wholeness of one deity" ala Paulo Coehlo style stuff. Not really my bag, my cup of tea, or my 'hipster new-age' beliefs.

      This collection of poems/short stories (Tears and Laughter), much as the title gives the impression of - was rather maudlin and depressing. The 'laughter' came from that of death and the joy of the release of it. This was basically a collection singing the praises of death, dying, being dead, suicide, and the joy of the release of life on 'such a grim [insert: shitty - my vocabulary, not his] world' and the embrace of it into this overarching heaven that includes those of all denominations and religions (primarily the Abrahamic ones, Judaism, Islam, Christianity).

      Its 94 short quick easy to read pages solely devoted to the release of life into this embrace of heaven, through death, particularly suicide in some cases. Eh, I guess not the greatest choice of reading for me - especially lately, and especially in winter.

    Book preview

    Tears and Laughter - Kahlil Gibran

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    TEARS AND LAUGHTER

    Philosophical eLibrary Editions

    of works by Kahlil Gibran

    Between Night and Morn

    Mirrors of the Soul

    The Procession

    Secrets of the Heart

    Spirits Rebellious

    The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

    A Second Treasury of Kahlil Gibran

    A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran

    Wings of Thought

    A Philosophical eLibrary Edition

    TEARS AND LAUGHTER

    KAHLIL GIBRAN

    With a New Preface by

    Susan Braudy

    PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY

    New York

    To M.E.H.

    I present this book—first breeze in the tempest

    of my life—to that noble spirit who walks

    with the tempest and loves with the breeze.

    Contents

    INTRODUCTION

    TIMELINE

    GIBRAN QUOTES

    EDITOR’S PREFACE

    FOREWORD

    THE CREATION

    HAVE MERCY ON ME, MY SOUL!

    TWO INFANTS

    THE LIFE OF LOVE

    THE HOUSE OF FORTUNE

    SONG OF THE WAVE

    A POET’S DEATH IS HIS LIFE

    PEACE

    THE CRIMINAL

    THE PLAYGROUND OF LIFE

    SONG OF FORTUNE

    THE CITY OF THE DEAD

    SONG OF THE RAIN

    THE WIDOW AND HER SON

    THE POET

    SONG OF THE SOUL

    LAUGHTER AND TEARS

    SONG OF THE FLOWER

    VISION

    THE VICTORS

    SONG OF LOVE

    TWO WISHES

    SONG OF MAN

    YESTERDAY AND TODAY

    BEFORE THE THRONE OF BEAUTY

    LEAVE ME, MY BLAMER

    A LOVER’S CALL

    THE BEAUTY OF DEATH

    THE PALACE AND THE HUT

    A POET’S VOICE

    THE BRIDE’S BED

    Kahlil Gibran

    Photograph by Fred Holland Day, circa 1898

    The Louise Imogen Guiney Collection, Library of Congress,

    Prints & Photographs Division

    Kahlil Gibran

    April 1913

    The Gibran Museum,

    formerly the Monastery of Mar Sarkis,

    Besharri, Lebanon

    Photograph © Eliane29 / www.fotosearch.com

    Introduction

    Kahlil Gibran is a wonderful figure—a genius—a man of contradictions. For starters, he’s an internationally revered Arabic mystic who lived most of his forty-seven years in Boston and Manhattan. (He was born in 1883 in Bisharri, a poor Christian village nestled among the historic and holy cedar covered hills of northern Lebanon—cited in the Bible as the Cedars of Lebanon.) A spiritual man raised as a Catholic, Gibran nonetheless believed all religions holy. Despite abandonment by his father, Gibran regularly sent the man money and heartening letters. Another contradiction: he’s cited as the best-selling poet of the 20th century, but Gibran toiled most of his life as a painter. Furthermore, even when writing prose, he uses the language of a poet. The most vexing contradiction is that despite lukewarm critical reception, Gibran’s soulful writings have stirred the hearts and passions of millions of people throughout the world. Indeed people recite his words when making marriage vows and to mark other highly emotional rites of passage. His words were spoken by young President John Kennedy in his 1961 inaugural speech.

    One final contradiction in Gibran’s life lurks in this magical volume Tears And Laughter. In his prose poem A Poet’s Death Is His Life, he writes of his distaste for a city of [the] living rich. Indeed this Manhattan resident ardently rhapsodizes about the beauty of nature as compared to the oppressive and ugly greed of city dwellers. In this volume, he also writes the parable Before The Throne Of Beauty about the beauty of the rolling hills and woods of Lebanon. In this parable the narrator encounters a Nymph of the Jungle who soothes his mind about his life in the rapacious city. He repeats her words to himself: Beauty is that which attracts your soul,/ And that which loves to give and not receive.

    The Prophet (his uplifting work that is celebrated as the best-selling book of poetry of the 20th century) is prose poetry and consists of twenty-six inspirational chapters teaching that the reader is far far greater than he or she knows, and all is well.

    Tears And Laughter is a similarly vital book of his writings. Most of its twenty-six poems and parables written in poetic language appeared in an Arabic newspaper when Gibran was very young—a precociously wise, displaced teenager living in poverty with his siblings and his beloved mother Kamila. They had immigrated to a Syrian-Lebanese community in Boston’s south end. The young man writes about spirituality and morality attempting to penetrate the pure natures of tragedy, joy and even death. The rich, exotic pieces that constitute Tears And Laughter also extol artistic expression.

    Indeed he values artists far above other people—particularly the rich, greedy and powerful, an important theme in this tender volume Tears And Laughter.

    In the parable Laughter And Tears, Gibran writes: Money! The source of insincere love; the spring of false light and fortune; the well of poisoned water; the desperation of old age!

    In his prose poem The Poet, he calls the poet a link between this and the coming world who people ignore in this life, but who is recognized only after he bids the earthly/ World farewell and returns to his arbor in heaven. He concludes that the poet will one day rule everyone’s hearts, and thus his kingdom has no ending.

    This young man could have been speaking nearly a hundred years ago of his own immortal legacy.

    Amazingly enough some thirty years after his death Kahlil Gibran was rediscovered and worshipped in the 1960s and 1970s by people of all ages and persuasions, including millions of young counter-culture romantics such as David Bowie and John Lennon—who quoted Gibran in his song Julia.

    For President John Kennedy’s inaugural speech in 1961, speechwriter Theodore Sorenson adroitly deleted the earnest poesy about nature from Gibran’s original lines:

    Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or are you a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.

    Gibran’s idealistic and passionate words appeared in his 1925 essay first published in Arabic when the artist was forty-two.

    Sorenson also borrowed the title of the same Gibran essay The New Frontier as the name of President Kennedy’s administration to inspire Americans to support and love President Kennedy. The phrase would be a rallying cry for the young president’s utopian ambitions and programs to banish the ills of poverty and to travel into outer space.

    Kennedy’s words about the New Frontier touched millions. Although uncredited, Gibran would have had reason to be proud. The new president—the idealistic son of the sort of rich greedy man Gibran railed against in Tears And Laughter—promised his fellow Americans:

    [W]e stand today on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats. … Beyond

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